Short Little Lives
by cherry valence
Summary: Laurel misses Tommy.


Short Little Lives

. . .

Summary: Laurel misses Tommy.

Note: I know that a lot of my readers –well, I know this isn't want you're expecting. There are some Olicity updates that you all are waiting on (and so patiently too, you're amazing!) but I've sort of been sitting on most of this all summer, and its occurred to me that Arrow is in a pretty good place to go ahead and post it. I missed—god forgive me—Amell Wenesday this week because—okay, long story because I'm excited and just a tiny, tiny drop buzzed (I was interning with the Mayor, and got to work on his re-election and last night he won—we won!—and I'm still on a victory high!)…okay, so anyways….pretty please no spoilers in the reviews, and this is different from my usual so I hope you like it, if not I'm bracing myself for all the "RAWR LAUREL HOW COULD YOU?!" But...in my head she is wonderful, and I really adore her (okay, sometimes she upsets me too, but she makes a great female role model—except for the feelings through liquor thing…). She's smart, and educated, and committed to her career…and in my head canon I think she and Felicity could make fabulous BFFs and take over the world through woman power.

I digress, and if you follow me on LJ at _sunsetstyle_ I'm making a Laurel/Tommy mix…so…there's that too.

. . .

_I thought: That is the fear: I have lost something important, and I cannot find it, and I need it. _

_-John Green_

_. . ._

As she walks into her apartment, even the wry thought hurts.

"_We had a good thing going, didn't we?"_

With a sigh, Laurel drops her bag on the table, and can't be bothered when it tips off the edge and tumbles onto her carpet. In all fairness, there is a lot that she can't be bothered by these days.

Every once in a while, it doesn't matter where she looks, because it's the one thing she can't retreat from; she hears Tommy's voice in her head, sees that perfect white smile and the slant of his head as he looks at her and shakes his head like he's in awe.

In the kitchen, she remembers the dirty glass and bowl in the sink and thinks about washing the small load before shaking the idea away. It's been a long day, and frankly…she just doesn't care. She flicks her hair over her shoulder, and tugs open the door to her fridge. Pushing aside take out containers in varying degrees of fullness, and every ethnicity in town, she finds the half empty bottle of Chablis that she'd opened over the weekend.

_And by the weekend, _Laurel notes, feeling a slight taste of criticism in her mouth, _she means Sunday night. _

Monday was the benefit for the Glades, and she'd come home and passed out in bed after the bottomless glass of cabernet. It had left her with a sour taste in her mouth, Tommy had always preferred red wines, and unlike her, his palette for them was a little more sophisticated.

Laurel chalks it up to that, _she just doesn't like reds_. The truth of the matter though, is that like almost everything else, it reminds her of Tommy. Everything reminds her of Tommy.

At the counter, she sets the bottle down and rises onto her toes to reach a clean glass. They're still on the top shelf, and she's easily two inches too short to reach it comfortably. Like a lot of things in her apartment, it's just one more thing that she hasn't changed since Tommy…

Laurel sighed, finally able to hook her finger around the stem of the glass and pull it from the shelf.

Her dad thinks that she's crazy for keeping this apartment. She wouldn't be surprised if he listed it with a realtor without telling her, but then again, that's the benefit of being an adult (even when he doesn't always treat her like one), it's her prerogative.

The big secret, Laurel thinks as she pulls the cork from the bottle with a bit of a struggle, is that she'd considered it.

More than once, she had woken up in the dead of night, her head pounding, blankets twisted around her ankles, the heart sinking as reality settled around her like a suffocating smoke as she remembered everything that had come to pass.

And she remembers _everything_.

He doesn't get it though, not really. She knows that her father has felt loss, that he knows what suffering is like; what it's like to miss someone with every piece of his soul…but he doesn't know what she's feeling—no one does.

Leaving isn't going to mend the ache, because she can't forget. No matter where it is that she goes, she can't help but to remember that she went to bed with Oliver. Even now, she can't explain it. All she knows, is that she feels so much guilt, because she can't ever apologize, or make it up.

Feelings for him? Of course she'd had feelings for Oliver. He broke her heart, he broke her-hurt her and she'd never gotten the chance to..._to deal with it_. She'd loved him, and he betrayed her, and a part of her had thought that somehow being with Oliver would make those feelings go away.

Oliver had left her, and then Tommy had left, and she just thought...maybe it could fix whatever was wrong with her that she couldn't make it work.

Even now, she has feelings for Oliver, but she doesn't want to be with him. Can't be with him. He's not the guy for her. It makes her think of Tommy in the beginning, telling her about how they've all always been in each other's lives, and they always would be.

How she wishes he had been right about that.

But now, now the guy for her is gone, and where does that leave her? Who is she? What does she do? There are no easy answers.

She just feels so incredibly lost, and there isn't a map to follow from here.

It doesn't even matter that they weren't together. She's had months to think about it, so she knows now that the little distinctions don't matter. While she laid trapped, under that block of concrete at CNRI and thought that she was going to die…

_Tommy. It was Tommy she thought of._

Laurel bites down on her lip, feeling that slight ache in her chest. Five months, and two broken ribs later, you'd never be any the wiser. It was funny though, the way that scarring works. It would be there forever, and some people might never even notice—but...but she would—_does_.

They'll probably have her institutionalized if she ever utters it aloud, but she's glad. For the first few months….well, is ecstatic too strong a word?

She was glad because it gave her this feeling of justice. Something had to hurt, there had to be some sort of repercussion for everything that she had done.

She pours the wine into the glass, taking a sip and setting the glass back on the table. With the first sip, she feels the ache wane slightly. Laurel still has some pills for the pain in the cupboard, pills that she's never used…just because in the beginning it was nice to feel something when everything else had felt so numb.

Now though, it's merely a dull ache and it's not worthy. It's merely _there_, digging its heels in to remind her that everything isn't okay, and that she's not in pain. She's just not comfortable.

Selling her apartment would be like that, she thinks.

Not painful, just uncomfortable.

But no, not for any of the reasons that her father imagines does she entertain the thought. Even though each time she walks in the door she remembers the cruel betrayal that Tommy would feel if he knew about her and Oliver…

Laurel bites down on her lip, deep in thought and not realizing she's done it until she draws blood, she has all the more reasons to keep it. She was supposed to be the right girl—he _was_ the right guy. Tommy was the guy for her…he treated her like she was some sort of unattainable goddess who could make everything right.

She was making nothing right.

All she thought about sometimes was him, and his voice in her head. His 'I love yous' and constant determination to prove himself. He made them an 'us'. It was all she ever wanted.

With a sigh, she picks up the bottle and pours some more before pushing the cork back in hard and hitting it down with the palm of her hand. It stings slightly.

Laurel sticks it back in the fridge and nudges the door shut with her foot.

For…_forever_ she teased him mercilessly. He could get so romantic, so _honest_. It was a side of Tommy Merlyn that she'd never even realized existed.

Her name had always felt right on his lips, and she had been ready to spend the rest of her life with him.

It doesn't feel right anymore, everything feels _off_; like a brick has been pulled from the walkway and she's stumbled, but was waiting still to get her footing right again.

Now though, no matter how she tries to scramble to right herself and fix things again it just doesn't work.

It was easy to nudge him and giggle when he told her that he felt like he wished they would be able to go back to the start and feel it all again; start all over again and feel everything for the first time.

Walking to the couch with her glass, kicking her heels off as she went, Laurel felt the sting again. It had been easy to make fun of Tommy for saying that, to tell him how ridiculously corny it was so she could cover up how incredibly…nervous it had made her. He'd made her unravel, crumbled the wall she'd built up around her after Oliver had devastated her, and she had started to convince herself that he was going to be the one who would fix everything for her.

Tommy would make her feel right again—he would make her _feel_ again.

Oh, and he had.

When she starts feeling like she misses him so bad that it will never, ever be right again; that she can't possibly survive this because it just hurts so bad, she goes back to the beginning; that smile he flashed her outside the courthouse, bringing her ham on rye sandwiches at work, making her the most incredible post-coital omelet while he shied away from her questions about where exactly he learned to cook…

Laurel squeezes her eyes shut, trying to clear these thoughts from her mind as she drops down on the couch, she's already cried so much. She wants to just…

Feeling the heaving in her chest, the painful catch that hits before the tears, she pushes the glass away and presses the heels of her hands against her eyes. She just wants it to stop, everything hurts so much.

Curling up with Tommy to watch bad movies, old movies, new movies; usually only to realize by the end of the movie she had no idea what had happened because she just slipped outside of reality. He had brought this sort of inexplicable comfort into her life that she never thought she would have after her family fell apart.

As much as going back to the beginning hurts, reminding her that there won't be any more new memories, that there won't be a future to look forward to; she realizes that it's as good as it's going to get.


End file.
